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A Woman in War: Exposing Secrets

Interview with Eileen McGahhey:  play interview   (MP3 file, 34.5 mins long, 16 MB)

Transcript of Interview

[Not on audio file]

Please state your name.

Eileen Mary Curtis McGahhey

[Beginning of audio file]

Please state your date of birth.

I was born August the 20^th, 1919 at seven o'clock in the morning. 

What area of England were you born in?

I was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in Manningham.  It's a part of Bradford, Yorkshire up in the hills.

How was life growing up, before you entered the war?

Very, very nice.

Good childhood?

Yes I had a very happy childhood.  Very nice living conditions, no complaints about anything.  We went away every summer on vacations and in 1929 my father got a big promotion and we moved to Cheshire.  And Cheshire is so beautiful, I wished I had never left it.  It was like moving into the 16^th century, with black and white cottages, it was lovely, it was a beautiful place to live Cheshire.

What did you do for work before you were drafted into the war.

Well, after I graduated high school, I went to an all girls high school and we wore uniforms, I think I had a very good education.  And after I left school, I went to work in Manchester and was training to be a buyer for wholesale children's wear.  Then in 1940 we had the blitz on Manchester, and it was a dreadful experience because it was on a Sunday night, and I had been out to tea at some friends house and couldn't get back to home at night because the air raid siren went at 6:30 in the evening and the buses stopped running and I had to stay all night.  I was all dressed up in my Sunday best clothes, and in the morning everyone had to go to work, regardless of whether you had been up all night or not you must go to work.  So off we went to work, and the tracks had been bombed, so the train had to stop and we all had to get off and walk the rest of the way.  We had to walk around some unexploded bombs, and Dunlop Motor Works was on fire.  My coat was white, and at that time I was more worried about my white coat getting dirty, than anything else.  And we went to worked and we hadn't been there about, oh I say till about 10:30 in the morning and the air raid sirens went again, and everybody wanted to go home, no one wanted to go down to the basement and get caught down there.  I went to go look for my father, whose business was about 2 blocks away and he was looking for me and we met each other.  I got a ride home in somebody's car that night it was another 12 hour air raid, and my fathers place was completely destroyed.  It was nothing but a big hole, and they didn't get his safe out of there until Easter, and that happened, the big blitz happened on Christmas Eve.  On Christmas morning a lot of people had no phones, no electricity, no water, it was a dreadful Christmas.  Everybody was so kind to one another that it brought out the best in everybody.  If people were like that to each other all the time it would be nice.

So the whole town came together after this happened?

Yes, well the village I lived in.  We all helped each other.  And after that they brought out children evacuees and billeted them in different houses where you had to take care of them.  They were children from Manchester whose homes had been destroyed. 

Is that when.

That is when my parents decided that I shouldn't work in Manchester anymore so I got a job with AV Roe and Company as a typist.  It was where they assembled the Lancaster bombers.  It was very interesting because they came in one end of the shed and came out on the other end all collected by the air force.  It was a wonderful bomber, it was a beautiful machine.  And then I was drafted into the army and I went to boot camp as you call it on December 17^th 1942.  And then we had to go thru all kinds of IQ tests and different things, and then I was sent with a group of girls to the Isle of Man.  We had to go on this little boat in the middle of the night with a destroyer escort because there were some German submarines around.  And we stayed in the Isle of Man for nine months and had the most marvelous time!  Billeted in hotels on the promenade!  And that's where we had to learn all about German Morse code and doing things the German way.  In September I was posted to Beaumanor.  September of 43.

How long did you stay at Beaumanor?

Till 45.

Until the end of the war?

Yes.

And what was your job like at Beaumanor?

Well, I was in what they call Ackbar 13, which was radio fingerprint.  We had receiving sets that filmed, like a cathode ray tube, and we filmed the signals as they came in and then we developed them and we had these big tables with lights underneath.  It's like comparing the signals so you can find out who is sending them.  The RDF room was next door.  The radio direction finding room and we could place where they were coming from which was the important thing.

So you could tell who it was and where it was coming from?

Yes.

How did the male soldiers and civilians at Beaumanor treat you?

Very nicely.  As a matter of fact, the men who were there, we didn't realize at the time, we thought they were four F's because they were just the home guard, but they were from intelligence.  They were doing the same work as us.

So when you were staying there was there a lot of talk amongst other soldiers not in you group about what they were doing?

No, nobody ever discussed what they were doing with anybody else, other than the particular group you were with.  That was wonderful things about it, you just didn't discuss what you did with anybody because you never knew.

You didn't know if they were for real or not, they could be spies.  What were your feeling about was before you were drafted?  Because the war had been going on for a while before you entered.

Yeah since 1939.  It was so sad, war is so sad.  The boys I had gone to school with and they lived across the road from where I did, four of them in a row were all killed.  Harold Clayton, he was killed on his first bombing mission.  Donald Woods was dropped in the ocean outside of Sicily.  And Norman Pendelton body was washed up in Norway , he had been shot down.  And Norman Raines, he got killed on D-Day.  It was just so sad and waiting to see if these boys came back from Dunkirk.  That was a dreadful time Dunkirk, waiting to see if your loved ones got away from France .  And so, war was horrible and hope to goodness that they've got the sense not to start another one.  It would be alright if Sadaam Hussein and George Bush fought it out in a duel, and see who wins.

So you were drafted into the army?

Everyone who was single between the ages of 18 and 40 had to go into either the Army, Navy, Air Force or the Land Army.  Or work in an ammunitions factory.

Did you have a choice?

Yes, first I wanted to go into the Navy because I liked their uniforms.  They were so cute, but they only had openings for cooks and that was not my line.  [Laughs]  So I took my chance and went into the Army, and it was good, I liked it.  We were very well taken care of I must say, very well.

Could you tell the story of how your house was hit with the incendiary bombs?

Oh yes.  This was of course before I entered the army, and it was night and we had the black out curtains drawn, and mother was in the kitchen ironing and I was in the living room helping my little sister with her homework.  And all of the sudden mother calls out "Oh! Come see! Come see!"  and we went to see what was the matter and you could see the light through all the black out curtains.  And my father said "Come on Eileen get outside!"  and off we went, I think I had the stirrup pump and daddy had the sandbags and we put it out.  Oh it was most exciting, I still have the bomb in the cupboard over there.  There were two as a matter of fact, we found another one, and my sister took the other to school for show and tell and some kid borrowed it to show his father and never gave it back to us.  Can you imagine children taking a tailfin of a bomb into school for show and tell?

That was probably pretty commonplace back then.  What is the age difference between you and your sister?

Seven years, I am seven years older than her.

And you have an older brother.

Yes, he is seven years older than me.

And what did they do during the war years?

My brother had a reserved occupation job at first, then he joined the auxiliary fire company so that he would be on duty at night and he had this little car with a thing pulled on the back that had water and sandbags and different things to put out incendiary bombs.  Then he manned the fire engine post and the night of the blitz he had got the red alert and my mom and he had arranged for a signal if there was a red alert and he called on the phone and let it ring so many times and hung up so she knew there was a red alert coming, but I couldn't get home.  Then he went into the Army in the bomb disposal squad because his job had been putting bombs together so eventually he had been put in taking them apart.  Then he went to Australia .

So your family was very close knit before the war started?

Oh yes.  And during the war my father ran a canteen for the American soldiers who were stationed in Poynton, and we would have them come for tea and they always brought spam and canned pineapple and stuff with them. [Laughs]  They had far more to eat then we did.  That's how I met my husband because the 82^nd airborne had this big dance and they sent word up to our camp in Beaumanor inviting the girls to come to the dance and to sign up because they would send trucks to pick us up.  And we look at it and thought, well you know they have such good refreshments, so let's go.  So we went and when we walked into their canteen it was all decorated with parachutes.  And they gave each girl a carnation, and the refreshments were cakes and cocoa and coca-cola and fruit salad, such things we had not had in a long time.

You were used to mess hall food.

Yes it was awful!  Grilled kidneys for breakfast or fish cakes for breakfast. Dreadful!

My girlfriend Gladys was so much fun, she would always be first in the chow line, and she would call down and say "Well girls its cod's head and custard today" or "Its seven matter pudding" [Laughs]  We had a lot of fun.

Your group consisted of all girls?

Yes all girls.  There were 12 of us in my group and we divided up into shifts.  We went on duty at 1:00 in the afternoon and worked until 7 then we were off until 7 in the morning then worked until 1 then were off until midnight then from midnight then 7 morning then 24 hours off.  We worked six hours then had 12 hours off.

You said before that you couldn't tell anyone else working at Beaumanor what you were doing.  You also couldn't tell your parents, friends or family.  Did people ask you what you did in the Army?

Oh everybody did.  You would just say "Oh, I'm a typist" and that satisfied them.

So no one had any idea what you were doing in that attic room.

No, and we really didn't know the extent of it ourselves.  We really didn't.  Everything was very, very secret, you kept everything to yourselves.  We had signed the Official Secrets Act so you knew better than to blab your mouth.

So you didn't know anything about Bletchley Park, about the Enigma?

No, just knew that the stuff went to Bletchley, so we really didn't know the significance of Bletchley Park. 

That information didn't come out until the 60s.

Yes, that's right.

When the war was over did you know what you were going to do?

Well, of course I had married in 1944 which by the way, was not just easy because in order to marry my husband, his family in Detroit had to be investigated by intelligence.

So you married him during the war?

Yes, we had to get permission.  And the researched everything before a girl from our outfit could marry someone from another country.  And then of course I waited to come over here and left England in January 1946 and arrived in New York February the 4^th 1946.  And the temperature was 4 degrees below zero.  And it was quite crushing actually, they got us all up at 4:00 in the morning to get us to look at the Statue of Liberty as we sailed by and it looked to me, it was green and I thought oh dear it's so cold and when the shipped docked they got us to stand on the deck and waive our hands to nobody and all these Pathe Gazette film things were going and they let all these paparazzi on board and they interviewed you where you were going and I was interviewed by the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News.  And then it came out in the paper "GI Brides waving to their Husbands" well that's not how it really was, we waived to the news photographers and the husbands were waiting in the Red Cross building at 48^th and whatever it is in New York City.  Of course, some girls were taken by bus to the railroad station and my husband had driven all the way to New York to meet me and we drove, it took two days to go to Detroit.  Pennsylvania I thought was beautiful but New York was shocking, I had never seen anything like it, those tenements with iron staircases outside.  But Penn was beautiful and Detroit was so cold and my clothing was not adequate, it never got that cold in England .  It was snow on the ground and every winter it snowed from Thanksgiving to Easter and I thought, this is no place for me, I wanted to go back to England .  My husband begged my not to, so we ended up settling in New Jersey, which is 700 miles closer to England and I liked New Jersey, I really did.  I liked the people, its nice, nice pleasant climate.

Not as cold as Detroit.

No! [Laughs] Not as cold!

Is there anything you would like to add, any reminiscing about Beaumanor?

Oh there was a ghost at Beaumanor.

....

And we all used to go to the pub on our nights off and my boss Mr. Sidall would go and play the piano and nobody knew he was from military intelligence, except us!  And the GIs were there and they were signing away and drinking up all the beer and all the old English men were getting madder than anything.

The GIs, the 82^nd Airborne had a camp near you.

Yes, and naturally all the pubs were filled with GIs.  They used to have practice jumps, they got 50 dollars every time they jumped.  An extra jump would give them an extra 50 dollars on their pay.

That was a good amount of money back then.

Yes, they made pretty good.

That was volunteer right, for the parachute jumping.

Yes.  And we used to go to the Nottingham Goose there.  It was neat to go home, I used to be able to go home once every six weeks.  And then after Spring 1944 we weren't allowed to go home anymore, weren't allowed to contact anybody.  My father used to get very upset he used to write to me and say "I haven't heard from you, is everything all right?"  And of course if I wrote to him my letters were censored because they didn't want anybody to know about the coming invasion.

Did you know anything about the D-Day invasion before it happened?

Oh yes, we knew it was coming, we had been warned about not saying anything.

So you couldn't even tell your husband, and he was going to be apart of it.

That's right.  Yes.  It was really something.

Did you know about any other invasions before they happened?

Well, there weren't any other invasions really.

Any battles or anything?

Lets see, when I first went to Beaumanor the war in North Africa was coming to a close, because we got some messages not in Morse, in regular German.  And we got a message or so from a German general in North Africa asking that American and British Air Force not to bomb a certain German ship that was in port because it was full of British and American prisoners.  If it hadn't had been that we had taken down that message, that was to be targeted, but they didn't because some kindly German warned us, so there were some decent ones you know.

So you had woman offices in charge of you but they didn't even know what you were doing?

That is right.  They were administrative officers, they had charge of the pay and discipline.  They thought they were something really terrific.  They didn't even know what we were doing and they weren't allowed to know.  And they were called down about being too hard on us, not getting enough sleep because if you listen to Morse code long enough it puts you to sleep.  And they used to be arranging things for us to do when we were off duty.  And finally they had to be called down about it because they weren't giving us enough time to rest.  They didn't know what we were doing and we weren't about to tell them either.

Then when you got to Beaumanor, how did you know what to do?

We were assigned to different rooms, like I was assigned to room 61 and the boss was a civilian from Bletchley and he was a very nice person and would tell us all what to do.  It just worked out wonderful that no one else told anyone what they were doing.  If it had been. it was just so casual that nobody ever thought about it being secret, but it was terribly secret.

What were the circumstances going on when you met your husband in the United States ?

Well after we had been interviewed on the ship by all the different press from the towns we were going to we were taken to the Red Cross building on 48^th and something in New York and then we got off and went up this flight of steps, and somebody said to me, "Go in that room and you'll see your husband" and he gave me a little push and I went in this room and I couldn't see a thing through all the bright lights.  And this man grabbed me and kissed me and it was my husband!  This nice thing about is was that a few days later my parents in England saw this on Pathe Gazette news reel at the local cinema.

So your parents got to know that you made it to America okay and that you met up with him.

Yes, it was pretty cool.  My mother wrote to me and said they stopped the film right there so that all the local people could see it because all the local people knew it was on the news reel.  [Laughs]